Throughout the duration of Shakespeare's tragedy, 'Anthony and Cleopatra', a tool adopted by the playwright keenly is the grand scope of settings that are presented to the audience. These locations vary throughout, but it is Rome and Egypt that feature most predominantly, these are the dwellings of the protagonists of the play. Seemingly united by the amorous love between Anthony and Cleopatra, these two places become increasingly remote from one another. This feeling is constructed purely from Shakespeare's ability to convey the pointed contrast between Rome and Egypt; one way in which he achieves this is by using imagery to produce the chasm that divides the two places.
             When Domitius Enobarbus, one of Anthony's faithful followers and a usually plain-speaking soldier initially describes the Egyptian queen in Act II Scene ii, it goes on to truly define what becomes representative of the Roman outlook of the East, and this is why this speech's importance is paramount in understanding primarily the difference between Egypt and the West. He decadently paints the image of Cleopatra sitting in a 'burnished throne/ [that] Burned on the water'. In this speech, the alliterative 'b' sound adds to the overall poetic stress of Enobarbus' entire speech, which in turn, has the effect of weighting the importance of his words. This is important as it draws particular attention to his language, pointing out that it is quite unusual for his character to be speaking with such grandeur. Also, the exceedingly intricate expression that is embraced here is a reflection of the extravagance that not only he employs, but the whole of Rome, when referring to Egypt and its queen.
             In terms of language and structure, this speech is saturated with sensual, rich imagery that is quite dissimilar to the language that is usually associated with any Roman characters, for when Enobarbus refers to the Queen as...